The Flickr Commons was launched on January 16, 2008 in order to present "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archive". The initial images showcased in partnership with The Library of Congress was aimed at improving the accessibility of publicly held photographs, and to allow the general public to contribute information about these photographs.

Normally, any photograph whether or not it's on the Internet is protected by copyright. This legal protection (usually for a limited time only) gives the photograph creator, owner or copyright holder the right to be credited for his work, decide when and where it can be used, and who can gain monetary income from it.

In The Commons' case, the images come with "no known copyright restrictions". This is either because the copyright has already expired and the work is now in public domain, or the institution which owns the copyright is no longer interested in exercising control over the work.

Of course, the statement is not foolproof as copyright law varies from country to country. These organizations also cannot guarantee that all images are in public domain as some of them lack proper documentations. Still, these institutions are providing these images for free as they believe to the best of their knowledge that they are not violating anyone's copyright through the sharing of these photographs.

Over the five years since its launching, The Commons has given greater access to images that would normally only reside in museums and libraries. Their availability and descriptions have also been improved by the tags and comments left by viewers around the world. So far, there are now over 2 million tags and 165,000 comments accumulated by The Commons images.

These images here represent the garnered the most views, comments or favorite marks by viewers, and were selected by the different Commons member institutions themselves. The Commons still accepts photographs and images every day, but the most effective way for the ordinary viewer to add to body of work is to leave insightful comments and tags to the photographs already in the archive.